Evaluation.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Once we had decided on the song that we wanted, we had to discover the genre of the song and the artist. We chose "Dragonfly" by M.Craft. The genre of our artist would be a combination of indie and acoustic guitar music. We all found this quite difficult to pin point the exact genre. This was the song that we had a hard idea for. We researched other similar artists, mainly male, we came up with the likes of Jason Mraz, James Morrison.

Our music video portrayed our artist to be isolated and cut off from the rest of the world. This was the theme we wanted to create through out the video. We did this by focusing mostly all the shots on Jonny, who took on the roll of the artist, M. Craft. This fitted in well with the slow pace of the song as well. We used some time lapses through the video, as the pace of the song speeds up. This was to create an abstract visual effect and to keep our audiences fixed on the video. The only problem with "Dragonfly" is that as it is so slow it may become slightly boring.

We tried to incorporate as many of Goodwin’s Points in our music video as we possible could. For example, the relationship between the visuals and lyrics. There are many references to water that are through out the song, so it was only fitting that we used scenes of water in the video and the ancillary products. There are also references to the city, which we have linked it by having the center of Cambridge as our back drop.
We had the idea of filming on a punt. We had an advantage as we live in and around Cambridge, and punting is everywhere. Another convention of a music video of the indie, acoustic genre is to have a performance by the artist.

During the planning process, Ali decided to check the weather forecast for the weekend that we planned to film. A problem that we encountered after we had shot and analysed our footage was that we originally wanted the setting for the video as the city at dusk. However, some of the footage filmed, was done during the day. This didn't go to plan. However, when editing this footage, we used some effects to draw out some of the colour, giving the whole video an antique feel.

As we were analysing and editing the footage that was filmed over the weekend, we realised that to create a time lapse we needed faster flowing traffic. The footage that we had was filmed on a busy roundabout junction with traffic lights, and wasn't consistent enough. I opted to take the camera out for the night and get the footage that we needed. I went to a flyover and captured some footage of the A14. In order to produce a time lapse we needed fast footage so that when we speeded up the footage to created the time lapse, it would result in a more consistent effect.

How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary tasks?

Both our DVD digi-pack and magazine advert use a stylized image of a side on photo of Jonny's face. These images were created on Photoshop, one of the main programs we used in the process, changing the opacity of a normal image. The image of the side of the face doesn't completely relate to the video. However, it does portray the loneliness well, and it allows the audience to recognise the artist. We also took a still of the river Camb from our video and made it look stylized, for the magazine advert.

As a group, we decided that we should go for a 3-fold digi-pack design. The front of it being the stylised image of Jonny's side profile. The middle/back being where our audiences can find the contents of the DVD, the M.Craft website, and other DVD details. Inside the cover we created a collage of stills from the music video itself. Having this would allow our audience to conect the magazine advert to the digi-pack.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The initial feedback that we received from the class was quite positive. With peers saying that we used a good range of camera shots and types of angles. However, the feedback that we got from everyone when we showed our rough cut version of the video, was also positive but we realised from this that some of the shots in the video were far too long, and made our video laborious. A class member suggested that we should film simple things, such as leaves or trees, and then use the effects on Final Cut Express to make them abstract and stylized.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Final Cut Express and Photoshop were the main new media technologies that we used to construct our products. We had used these products before in other products. Final Cut was the program we used to edit our footage. Both programs are quite complex. To research similar artists, inspiration for our digi-pack and magazine advert we simple used the Internet. The inspiration for our magazine advert came from James Blunt's album cover for Back To Bedlam. We also looked at The Doors' albums, as well as the Beatles. The internet was also used to research time lapses. We found that Coldplay used a time lapse in their video for "Yellow". Jonny used his Myspace acount to contact M.Craft just to tell them that we were going to use their song for a media project. He didn't reply.